Behemoth or The Long Parliament

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"To him, poodle. . . bite him, Peper. ”Supporters of Parliament ( Roundheads ) and Royalists ( Cavaliers ). - Contemporary caricature on the English Civil War (1642–49)

Behemoth, or The Long Parliament ( Behemoth or Das Lange Parlament ) is a state-theoretical work by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes from 1668, which is thematically related to his much better known main work Leviathan . Due to a printing ban imposed by King Charles II , it could not appear until 1681, after the author's death.

At first sight it is a historical work about the English Civil War , which was fought between King Charles I and the House of Commons from 1642 to 1649 . On the basis of the horrors of this historical event, however, the so-called state of nature , a central concept in Hobbes' political philosophy, is to be shown as an example . It is marked by anomie and chaos ; people cover one another with aggression, wage a " war of all against all " and live accordingly in constant fear of death and dispossession. Behemoth , the land monster of Jewish mythology imagined as a hippopotamus or elephant, to whose strength man has to capitulate, is symbolic of this .
The essential difference between Behemoth and Leviathan must also be taken into account. While the former is characterized as a rural being by the constant presence of violence, the Leviathan is to be understood more as a latent power that only comes to the fore in certain situations.

Behemoth and Leviathan, lithograph by William Blake

The constant fear of each driving people to overcome the natural state by merging into a strong, well-security guaranteeing political system . This is symbolized in Hobbes' philosophy by the sea ​​monster Leviathan , which gave his main work of 1651 the name.

Franz Neumann used Hobbes' writing for his work “ Behemoth. Structure and Practice of National Socialism 1933–1944 ”by analyzing the so-called Third Reich . Behind the facade of the almighty state (Leviathan), terror and arbitrariness are ultimately hidden - which is more characteristic of the state of nature (Behemoth).

See also

literature

  • Thomas Hobbes: Behemoth or The Long Parliament . S. Fischer , Frankfurt 1991. ISBN 3-596-10038-0 (published posthumously in 1681)
  • Franz Neumann: Behemoth. Structure and Practice of National Socialism 1933–1944 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1984. ISBN 3-596-24306-8 (first published in 1942, expanded in 1944, the German translation in 1968)

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